Why TA was so Grand?

Are you the kind of guy that listen to vinyl because the sound is more colorful ?

It's important to remember that when TA got released the graphics were very very good. Especialy if you compare Ta to Red alert 1 released a year earlier.

Electromagnetic Radiation is unavoidable in this MODERN world? excuse me, but it's been unavoidable since... well since the Big Bang. Walk outside. BOOM. Electromagnetic Radiation by the sun!
Sorry to be a silly nitpicker

I remember comparing them on release, what a difference.

Sad thing is I ended up playing Red Alert because my buddies had it too, I had TA in a box and never really played it, I have kicked myself many times and often want to try it for a laugh.

I never felt bad about Supcom though, this RTS was the bee's knee's to me, I tested in the beta and never looked back, apart from looking back to wonder why I never tried TA!

I am even tempted to go and try it now.

You'd have a blast the comunity's active and you wouldn't belive how much ask Ze Pilot for updated stats but AFAIK :
2.500 gamers daily
500-600 daily peak

Certainly, as compared to other RTS games, TA had a scale and scope which no other could match - gigantic maps (modelling three dimensions with fairly much detail, no less!), a lot of different units and weapon systems which were out in actual battles in quantities per player that other games couldn't pull off per game, controls that still worked on *that* scale, and networking code that worked well, too.

Each of these aspects was just bigger and better than whatever other RTS had, and TA pretty much remained unique as a grand combination of these aspects until Spring RTS became more polished and SupCom came along approximately a decade later.


That said, I don't think there are too many millions that played TA, SupCom and Spring combined. Certainly not billions.

And the RTS genre as a whole had too many popular games that pretty much completely ignored everything that was good about TA for a very long time -including all bits and pieces that really ought to have been simple to implement-, so... yea.

Someone (possibly nanolathe) mentioned it in another thread, but yet another reason TA feels so good is that the world is so consistent in terms of the weapons, and their projectiles, explosions, damage, speed and sounds. It feels like reality, where a lot of the same technology gets used at different scales in different environments. Like, the Merl/Diplomats rockets feel the same as the missile frigates rockets, the guardian/punisher weapons feels like the goliath and millenium weapon, all the green lasers feel the same, the heavy bomber drops the same bombs as the regular bomber, just it drops more.

I think PA is going a similar route, judging by the unit blueprints specifying ammo/weapons separately from the unit.

For me I think there are three things:

• The soundtrack.
• Interesting units. The lineup in Supcomm is bland by comparision.
• My ability to ignore the economy (I think an RTS gamer who has never played multiplayer cares a lot less about the efficiency of their economy).

Also kromius, what is "the spring game"? Spring isn't a game.

Yeah yeah, "spring isn't a game, it's an engine". You say spring, people think "that TA remake".

All of the TA-like RTSs I've played have strengths and weaknesses that make them special.

While Supcom/FA tend to be the best on the grand-strategy level, along with the smoothest UI, the units tended to be very uniform across the different factions, fulfilling only basic functionality. The variety only really came from the experimentals, on which there was a bit too much of a focus for a strategy game. Also, the economy was a bit convoluted, and the balance between tech tiers was poor enough that certain units had a very limited usefulness in a match. (Also, certain strategies, such as mass air, were usually favored, and they tended to be won based on the tech race more than anything else.)

TA is an older game, so it lacks a lot of the great UI features of Supcom, and the graphics aren't quite as fancy. Also, it is a bit slower to get through the start of a match, and there's a bit more micro to use certain units effectively. However, there was a lot more unit variety, allowing for more creative plays. The sound and visual effects have a lot more impact than any other TA-like, so the game feels very visceral. The economy is a bit simpler, and allows for more spread out bases than Supcom, making base-building more organic. (However, due to the lack of UI features, this does make it harder to keep track of things than in Supcom.) It still has certain boring strategies that are usually favored and can make for less strategic battles, but it also has more balance mods that do a better job of keeping this in line. (Not to dismiss the Supcom mods, of which there are plenty, but I haven't played enough of them to know how well they do balance adjustment. I hear good things about Black Ops when it comes to adding variety and balance, but I think others on this forum could elaborate better than I.)

Zero-K is the main Spring-based game I have played, and probably the one I enjoyed the most. It implements much of the UI advances of Supcom, and adds a lot of its own UI innovations. However, it's not implemented quite as smoothly, though since it's in constant development, it can only improve. Graphics are somewhere between TA and Supcom, as are the sound/graphical aesthetics. The gameplay is very fun, with a good variety of units. The flat tech-tree results in a more fixed unit balance with regards to usability, and the concept of factions is replaced by the factory system, which encourages player unit variety, but allows players to vary their strategy as they build other factory types. The main issue is that units tend to follow a paper/scissor/rock balancing system, which I find less interesting than a situational system, but it works well nonetheless. Also, it runs natively on Linux.

PA has fans from all the communities providing input, so I expect that a lot of the issues from each game will be mitigated, while the strengths of each game are implemented. (Already we have the visceral feel and expect the unit variety of TA, the powerful UI of Supcom, and the single faction and UI innovations of ZK.)

This has evolved greatly since FAF.

You mean the balance of vanilla FA? Or unit variety? (I know that there are mods adding unit variety.)

Don't get me wrong, FA is my favorite of the bunch. But I enjoy each one for different reasons.

Both. Lot of useless units has now a role, the tiers are more balanced, so you see more different units on the field, and mixing your army correctly is actually more important.

The SCUs alone were heavily reworked, and it's a nice niche unit that we are still discovering.

The XPs fill the role of and "tankers", but they probably lose on their own. They need to be part of your army.

And "engineer spamming" is now an option, not an obligation. (multiple factories are viable for all tiers).

TA SC And FA are all behind..
There is only one.

FaForever!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Are you serious? Naw, I'm just trolling. And yeah, I totally don't wear normal cotton underwear like most everyone.. else.. here? Ok, I sort of assume that one. I wouldn't know what tin foil underwear feels like, though, since tinfoil is not very soft, and it's scratchy as well. No thanks. :lol:

Your own link - http://www.emwatch.com/Computers.htm
Computer monitor radiation
" The item most likely to cause a health hazard in some offices is the computer monitor, or screen. The old box-shaped cathode-ray tube (CRT) computer monitors generally have quite high levels of radiation at around 30 cm.

The CRT computer monitor in our office produced 3 milligauss of radiation at 30 cm, measured from the front and 4 milligauss at the same distance from the sides. This is a fairly recent model. Computer monitor radiation from older equipment can be even higher.

A constant 3 mG of computer monitor radiation is a health hazard in itself, but remember that this same user is probably also absorbing low-frequency radiation from computers, printers, power supplies (ups), florescent lights and mobile phones as well as microwave energy from wireless modems, routers, networks and printers.

No wonder computer users get sick so often!

Fortunately, technology has come to our aid with the LCD monitor (the flat one), which emits minimal radiation. For example, the LCD screens in our office create an EMF of 0.3 milligauss at 30 cm, from the front or back - and practically nothing at the sides. This is a much safer level.

More recent still are LED monitors. I have one fitted to my laptop. EMF levels on this monitor are very similar to the LCD monitors, so nothing to worry about there.

If you use the older CRT type for long periods every day, perhaps it's time it was replaced. (Speak to the boss!)"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3592304/
"It was also observed from the [Table/Fig-3] that eyestrain (p value=0.004), and watering (p value= 0.049) were significantly reported by more number of subjects who work with computers without adjusting the brightness of the screen. [Table/Fig-3] also showed that eyestrain (p value=0.004) and burning (p value=0.020) of eyes was found to be significantly associated with subjects not taking breaks during computer use. It was also found that eyestrain was less when subjects used LCD monitor instead of CRT monitor and had a significant association with p value of 0.042 [Table/Fig-3]."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... /table/T3/

Any other questions? I can be sure to link other such websites such as the MANY google results of the correlation of CRT monitors and eye-burning. I don't think it'll make a difference since linking the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) which tends to, you know, associate itself with the U.S. National Library of Medicine, and National Institutes of Health. But, you know.. figured the .gov didn't give that one away. xD No matter how many Google results of random sites I link, not one beats a recent government medical study proving my point.

[/End of Optometry lesson..?]

As for FAF..

Air dominance in even the latest FAF is still basically impossible to gain back if the opponent has a ball of ASFs, you do not, and you're building at the same rate. The air battle CAN be foregone by a load of T3 SAMs, but when you have a gunships and/or bombers in the mix, there isn't any way to get that up. It's a rush for air dominance, and once you have it, you can quickly take the win if you're aggressive enough.

That's what I'm hoping does not happen in PA. In Total Annihilation, we had godly effective flak for eating bombers and gunships for breakfast, but they were also low in health and not good against fighters.. which didn't do a lot of damage anyway. The problem was there wasn't a fix for large balls of fighters that were too fast for SAMs, so they took away the fighter's ability to attack land and now it's only a shadow of what it was. Give TA an equivalent of a T3 SAM launcher, and those fighters wouldn't be the 'overpowered' deathball they're viewed as.

What I love about TA is that EVERYTHING SHOOTS EVERYTHING. (basically, anyway)

Played a game once of shore to shore once, ships weren't even viable with the submarine warfare going on, and he sent a massive squadron of a few hundred bombers, gunships, fighters, you name it. If it flew, he built it. Descended upon my base.. Didn't expect me to have a line of Vulcans ready to ground-fire at my command fully powered and ready for blood. Don't think I've ever seen something so beautiful.

Mobile Artillery can shoot aircraft with no problem, all aircraft (with weapons anyway) can shoot at the ground (including superiority fighters), everything had a speed which it could be physically micro'd to get away from barrages of dozens (or hundreds) of missiles. It was a true 3d environment where any bullet can hit anything if the trajectory allowed it, and it didn't try to limit you. I'm hoping to see more of this in PA.

Does anyone else play ta sound track while driving to work?? Lol It instantly makes my day feel epic.

Thanks all for the replays
so far the main reasons i saw were the music and the innovations TA brought to RTS's at the time. Alot of you did say to go through the game to understand why it was great but right now Im a bit bogged down by work so i will keep to just the regular games i play for now. That and i probably wouldn't get the same experience due to my spoiled nature with more modern graphicsXP. Also when I mentioned spring i meant zero k, woopsXD. Other than that i guess ill just have to wait for PA. Ill be joining the ranks of commanders come Beta so it should be fun. I look forward to seeing you all on the battlefield from the cozy chair of my Metal planet as i unleash its death weapon on your poor nostalgic souls.

And keep the comments coming; i like videos of epic battles aswell

We'll be waiting with our Asteroid slingshots in the ready!

Like everyone has mentioned here before, Total Annihilation was nothing like anything else released at the time. I was a kid and had a Pentium 166MHz computer at the time and there was nothing else like it. Our computer only had a basic S3 Virge card and it still ran the game beautifully, but there was always the problem of the EMG lag - I'm sure others can elaborate better than I can.

3 reasons
manly sounds
manly sounds
manly sounds

sounds department is so underrated in today games, for me is more important than the graphics, sometimes it become so important, that i compare it to the gameplay

this is why also Broodwar>>>> starcraft 2